


Unwatched

by NevillesGran



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Archivist Jon, Gen, Just Desserts, Set at some nebulous future date, divine ecstasy, vengeance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-27 05:27:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19784176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NevillesGran/pseuds/NevillesGran
Summary: Elias knew he was about to die.





	Unwatched

Elias knew he was about to die.

He did not Know—that had never been his gift. But he knew with the surety of a man who had planned for it, dreamed of it, longed for it. He had Seen Martin Blackwood walk into the fog, Basira Hussein bleeding from her eyes, Georgie Barker clutching at a gaping, bloody hole in her side and looking up and saying, “ _Go_.” He would never Know which had been Jonathan Sims’ true breaking point but it didn’t matter because he was here, now, or here enough to be in a rage, and Elias was flayed in glory in the Archivist’s Gaze.

He did not fight. He would not win, and that meant he already had. He unraveled. His skin and mind and lifetime peeled apart; his memories were categorized and discarded, unimportant; he was nothing but Seen and Known and taken to pieces, slice by blinding, magnificent, agonizingly _Archived_ slice beneath the full weight of the Eye. The pain was golden and he was Beheld—

It stopped.

It stopped and Elias was alive, barely, and there was _nothing._ It had been like this once, before— before— He reached, opened the eyes on his face, and that was _all_ ; not even in the coldest times with Peter, there had never been— there was no prickle on his neck, no blinking in the corners of the room, just—

The Archivist, the Beholding’s truest avatar on Earth, who would (soon) wear the Watcher’s Crown (so soon), looked down at him—just _looked_ , just dark, human eyes, the eternal light in them unreachable—and turned away, saying, “I don’t need to see this.”

For the first time, Elias felt fear. The terrible absolute _absence_ of being watched, when he had been promised—he had done everything—

The Archivist walked away as Elias reached after him, and Melanie King slid forward to take his place. She smiled with the joy of War itself and said, “But _I_ do,” and her knife found his throat.

**Author's Note:**

> you ever just...want to hurt someone in the only way you're pretty sure they'd truly feel, in a situation they brought about themselves in every way?


End file.
